“Wh-what do you want?” he stammered, his hands out as though to ward them off. “I haven’t done nothin’. Ye can’t arrest me. I haven’t done nothin’, I tell you.” His terror was pitiful, but Billie followed up her advantage ruthlessly while the girls stood by in admiring silence. “You _have_ done something,” she told him sternly, while he cowered still further back from her. “You’ve stolen things—lots of things. And we _will_ have you arrested——” “Oh no—oh no,” he cried out, fairly gibbering in his terror and slinking further back against the wall. “Ye’re tryin’ to scare me. I haven’t done nothin’, I tell ye.” But Billie took him by the sleeve and shook him as she would a bad child. “I tell you I _know_,” she cried, conviction in her tone that carried even to the poor muddled brain of the simpleton. “And I know where they are, too. They are in your cave, hidden away. Every-last-one-of-them!” Of course Billie was taking a big chance, but the shot went home. The simpleton stared at her for a moment out of his blood-shot eyes while his big mouth dropped open. Then he began to cry, great tears that ran down his grimy face and made crooked streaks upon it. It was an indescribably terrible and pitiful sight, the poor silly fellow in his abject terror, and ordinarily Billie would have felt sorry for him. But she thought of Polly Haddon, and the thought gave her courage. Polly Haddon had suffered, and now if it was this poor simpleton’s turn, it was no more than he deserved, after all. “Listen to me carefully,” she said, pulling at his sleeve again and speaking very distinctly. “If you will take us to the cave and promise to give back everything you have stolen to the people you have stolen from, we will try to keep you from being arrested.” “You won’t put me in jail?” jabbered the simpleton. “You won’t let the policemen get me?” Billie shook her head, adding quickly: “But you must take us to the cave right away and help us bring back the things you have stolen. Otherwise we will have you arrested to-night.” They were hardly prepared for his sudden acceptance of the ultimatum. He turned, with the swiftness that had surprised Billie and Teddy before, and strode off through the heavy snow, the girls, after a minute of indecision, following. “What do you suppose Miss Walters will say?” Laura whispered in Billie’s ear. “Do you suppose she will mind our running away like this?” “I don’t know,” answered Billie, adding with a hint of premature triumph in her voice: “I don’t imagine she will say anything though if we come home with the knitting machinery models, the blue prints, and an armful of stolen things besides.” “Oh, if I can only get back my watch, I’ll be happy,” sighed Connie, as she plodded along beside Vi. “‘If’ is right,” said Laura, ruefully. “We haven’t got anything yet, you know.”